Archivo mensual: octubre 2007

How did HIV spread wordwide? This is one of the most obscure mysteries of the AIDS. A recent paper published in PNAS journal provides an answer for the initial steps of the disease after leaving Africa in 60s. As Dr. Worobey said:

“Our results show that the strain of virus that spawned the U.S. AIDS epidemic probably arrived in or around 1969. That is earlier than a lot of people had imagined, [..] Haiti was the stepping stone the virus took when it left central Africa and started its sweep around the world,”

The “USA first model” has been the most accepted for scientific community for several years and with these new data it could be possible to reorganize the different HIV strains and learn how the HIV mutated and diversified. Take together this info could help with the vaccine development.

This paper reminds me the OPV-AIDS hypothesis, which argues that AIDS originated from live polio vaccines prepared in chimpanzee tissue cultures which were administered to up to one million Africans between 1957 and 1960.

After saturday´s dinner, Aitor (50% of Linking Paths) recommended us an interesting documentary named “Zeitgeist” (which means something similar like “trends” or “spirit of the age” in German). It is made up of 3 different scenes, the first one speaks about the Old testament God and ancient religions, after that, the director deepens inside the 11/9 attack against Word Trace Center. Finally, he concludes with a dissertation on Federal Reserve system and its power. I catalogued this movie with the Conspiranoia tag, however some of its scenes are bright and impressive. I choose the initial speech about God:

“because I have to say the truth [..] about bullshits [..], all the times champion of the false promises and exagerate claims: religion. Think about it, religion has actually convinced people that is an invisible man, living in the sky, watching everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has an especial list of 10 things he doesnt want to you do, and if you do any of these 10 things, he has an especial place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and angry, where He will send you to live and sufer and burn and shock and scream and cry forever and ever, to the end of time!………… But He loves you!!!!”

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a smart seminar titled “Infectious diseases are still with us”. The speaker was Dr. Vicente Larraga who discovered a vaccine against Leishmaniasis which is in its third year of being patenting/experimentation/bureacracy-surfing. Interestingly, yesterday, was also announced that Dr. Pedro Alonso had successfully made human assays using a Malaria´s vaccine (with newborns) which, as Leishmaniasis´ vaccine, gives more than 60% of efficacy against these overwhelming diseases.
Dr. Larraga showed us some data about incidence of several infectious diseases on population. Especially about ones that are “invisibles” for our immune system which involve some viri (AIDS), bacteria (TB) or protozoans (Leishmaniasis, Malaria).
As Dr. Larraga said when antibiotics and vaccines were discovered, many researches thought that Infectious disease age had finished, but that was not true for this group because all of them have a similar strategy for infecting: They lie hide inside the host cells until a trigger let them to replicate and invade other cells. In this scenario our immunity system fire against a really well covered enemy losing all our bullets.
With the discover and probe of these vaccines these amazing researchers could erase two of the most killer agents of our planet. In addition, they represent an isle of warriors who fight against “Diseases of poverty” while all the Corporations are saying “Gimme the money, man”. Good news.